For the Wolf by Hannah F. Whitten

Chapter Seventeen

The closet smelled like dust. Not an uncommon scent in the Keep, where the forest was as close as your next breath, but usually it was chased by other smells— greenery, dirt. This smell was, simply, dust. The smell of something left so long all other features had bled out.

Red waved her hand to keep drifting grit from her eyes. “It seems like it’s been longer than a hundred years since this closet was opened.”

“Take it up with Fife,” came Lyra’s reply. “Though in his defense, the Keep became much harder to clean once the forest started breaking in.”

Eammon’s stolen belt slipped toward Red’s hips; grumbling, she pulled it back up. “Anything will be an improvement, I guess.”

When the corridor collapsed, it took all Red’s clothes with it. In the weeks since, she’d made do with the nightgown she’d been wearing, and Eammon’s shirts in a pinch— they reached almost to her knees, and if she stole a belt, too, they were serviceable. Fife barely noticed, but the first time Eammon saw her in the makeshift gown, the tips of his ears turned scarlet.

Sharing a room was the only facet of their convenient marriage they adhered to, and even that was by technicality. Red slept alone, woke alone. The only sign Eammon had been there was his crumpled bedding in the corner, and his habit of leaving the wardrobe doors open. Red always closed them.

Some days, she didn’t see him at all. He was in the library, or off in the Wilderwood. He didn’t keep her same hours— no one did— and sometimes she’d wake to his nest of blankets completely undisturbed.

Every once in a while, there’d be a note on the desk in that messy, slanting handwriting, directing her to the tower. The magic she worked with his help was small, nothing so perilous as taking a wound— she’d grown the ivy in the pot and made the buds on a branch open into leaves with middling success. It wasn’t as easy to direct as it had been the night she healed him, but it could be controlled, if she kept her memories in check and thought of Eammon, letting their bond of marriage and forest smooth her magic into something easy to grasp. Physical proximity seemed to help, too, but the thought of mentioning that to him felt vulnerable in a way she didn’t want to examine too closely, so she kept it to herself.

Red shivered, the bare skin of her calves rising in goose bumps. In addition to being scandalous, Eammon’s shirts did little to cut the constant chill of the Wilderwood. It had been Lyra’s idea to go ranging for old clothes, and they’d checked every storage closet still standing in the Keep before finding them.

“I could lend you something,” Lyra said, leaning against the wall. She cleaned her nails with a dagger, feigning nonchalance. “If you want.”

Since she’d been at the Keep, Lyra had been quicker to friendliness than Fife, but still standoffish in her own way. In the past week or so, though, she’d made more overtures of friendship— telling Red about the shadow-creatures she saw in the forest, stories about her and Fife and Eammon’s strange existence in the Wilderwood. Red’s favorite so far was the time Eammon decided he was going to learn to cook and sent Fife to the Edge with a list as long as his arm of ingredients. Apparently, he’d nearly caught the kitchen on fire. Fife managed the food after that.

It made Red wonder about the other Second Daughters, how their time here had looked before the Wilderwood killed them, drained them. She supposed it was a vote of confidence that Lyra would try to reach out. It meant she thought Red would be around awhile.

Red leaned around the closet’s open door, raising a deliberate eyebrow at Lyra’s frame, much thinner than her own. “Trying to wear your clothes might end up more scandalous than wearing Eammon’s.”

Lyra shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

The gowns were folded on the bottom shelf. Red sifted through the smooth silk and sumptuous brocade carefully, half afraid they might crumble in her fingers. They came in all different sizes, in styles she’d seen only in history books, and the weight of centuries packed into the fabric made them seem heavier than they should.

Lyra’s head poked around the door, brows raised. The closet was behind the staircase, and pale light from the solarium window above turned her tightly coiled curls to a copper-threaded halo. “Well?”

The dress Red held was forest green, embroidered with golden vines along the sleeves and hem. “This looks promising.”

Fife and Eammon were nowhere to be seen, so Red changed behind the staircase. The dress was tight in the chest and hips, but mostly fit. She held her hands out to her sides. “Suitable?”

“Suitable.” There was a strange, half-uneasy light in Lyra’s eyes that her smile couldn’t shake.

Red picked at the embroidery. “Do you know whose it was?”

“Merra, I think.”

Merra. The Second Daughter before Red. The fabric felt strange on her skin.

Lyra hitched at the strap that held her tor, checked the small bag at her waist to make sure it was stocked with blood. “I’m off to patrol. Wish me no monsters.” She slipped through the door into the twilight.

Merra’s green skirts slid over Red’s bare legs, the sleeves itching her arms. She turned, headed for the staircase down to the library. If the day was hers, she planned to spend it reading.

Her eyes flicked over the corridor, a quick surveillance that had become part of her routine. The sentinels hadn’t moved since the night the Wilderwood came for her— on the days they practiced using its magic, Eammon diligently checked her hands for wounds before she touched anything, and once made her bandage a papercut— but Red kept a wary eye out, just in case.

Her gaze carefully combed through the churn of roots and vines. Still, it took her a moment to realize what was wrong, the hole in the haunted tableau she’d grown so used to.

The sentinels were gone.

Panic iced her limbs; Red whirled, searching the shadows, sure the white trees had moved farther into the Keep, maybe preparing to come for her again. Nothing stirred but dust.

Slowly, Red crept to the precise line where Eammon had cut off the forest. Husks of leaves and thin roots littered the floor, still and silent.

A smear of blood marked one of the dead leaves. Crimson, green-threaded. Once she’d seen it, more bloodstains were easy to spot— on the moss, on the branches.

Fife checked the sentinels daily, stabilizing them with his own blood as much as he could. Thus far, they’d stayed clear of shadow-rot, fine to be left until Eammon had the strength to move them. But if he’d felt the need to bleed for them now, all at once . . .

Then it was getting worse. Still getting worse, despite her using the forest’s magic, despite their thread bond. Still taking pieces of Eammon, whether let from a vein or a change in his body.

Red chewed her lip, made a split-second decision, and headed for the door.

In the courtyard, fog eddied over the ground. It cleared over an out-of-place shape in the landscape before hiding it again. Something tall and straight beyond the tower, by the gate.

Another sentinel.

And next to it, on his knees— Eammon. The sharp edge of the dagger in his hand caught the dim lavender light.

“Wait!” Red gathered Merra’s skirts and rushed barefoot over the moss, the beat of her pulse a reminder of the blood on the floor. “Eammon, wait!”

His head shot up, shoulders straightening like she’d caught him at some forbidden thing. The blade angled toward his palm for a second longer before he pulled it back. When he stood, it was slow, as if his bones were too heavy for his muscles to lift.

Red stopped when she reached him, chest heaving. The sentinel sapling stood just inside the iron gate, stretching half again as tall as Eammon, the knobby beginnings of branches at its pale crown. “I saw the corridor,” she said between breaths. “Why did you move them all at once?”

“I had to.” Eammon’s fingers curled inward, as if to cover the slashes on his palm, leaking sap. “Fife checked them this morning. Shadow-rotted, halfway up the trunks.” He ran a tired hand over his face, left a streak of scarlet and green on his brow. “If I didn’t move them back to their places now, I wouldn’t have been able to at all. They would’ve rotted away where they stood. And I can’t . . . the Wilderwood can’t manage having that many weak spots.”

The shadow-infected sentinel stood thin and pale in the unnatural twilight, stretching toward the starless sky like it could escape the ground.

“I don’t understand. I’m using the magic. We got married.” Her fingers curled to a fist, like she’d strike the bone-white bark. “Why isn’t that enough?”

Eammon’s eyes traced her face, something sorrowful in them. He didn’t answer.

Red set her teeth. She took a tentative step forward, closing the fog-covered distance between them, and reached for the dagger in his hand.

Eammon snatched it back. “No.”

“What else am I supposed to do? My blood is the only thing that’s made any damn difference so far!”

His eyes flashed, grip tightening on the dagger. “No,” he repeated, the word like a shield.

“There has to be something else we can try, then. Something without blood.” Her lip worked between her teeth, eyes flickering up to his. “What about the magic?”

Eammon looked away, almost a flinch. A hunch in his shoulders, as if he was suddenly hyperaware of that extra inch of height that had never gone away.

The changes scared him. And he was ashamed. Of the alterations the Wilderwood made, or of his fear of them, she wasn’t sure.

“Maybe the changes won’t linger,” Red murmured.

“They did last time.” Kings, he sounded so tired.

“You were doing it alone, then. You won’t be anymore.”

It took him aback, made a swallow work down his throat. A dart of amber eyes, from the sentinel to her, like he was cataloging the distance between. “I don’t like you being close to them, Red,” he said quietly. “Even when there’s no cut for them to get into, no blood. I know what they want to do.”

“And I know you won’t let them.” She crossed her arms, fingering the embroidery on her sleeves. “We got married, and it made magic come easier, but me growing ivy in pots clearly isn’t helping you. So let’s try this.”

He didn’t like it. Every line of his face said so, the full lips pulled flat, the heavy brows lowered.

“I trust you.” She tried to say it lightly, but the words wouldn’t come out flippant. “You should trust yourself.”

Silence. Then Eammon sighed. Another swipe of his hand over his face, and when he looked at her this time, he finally noticed the dress, eyes going wide. “Where did you get that?”

“Lyra and I found it. I was tired of wearing your clothes.”

Color flared across his cheekbones. “Fair enough.”

Hairline fractures of shadow-rot crawled the sentinel sapling’s trunk, stretching farther than they had moments ago. Red turned to it like it was an oncoming army. “Tell me what to do.”

A heartbeat, then Eammon finally sheathed his dagger. “Show me your hands.”

She held out her upturned palms. Eammon took them in his, scars rough against her skin, peering closely for any trace of a wound. Satisfied, he dropped them, and cold air rushed in where his warmth had been. “The placement of every sentinel is deliberate.”

“Like bricks in a wall.”

“Right. Like bricks in a wall.” Eammon reached out, settled his hand on the white trunk. “In order to keep the Shadowlands from leaking through— in order to keep the wall strong— we have to put the sentinels back where they’re supposed to be. When we heal them, they return to their place.”

“So how do we heal them?”

“Directing magic to drive back the rot.”

“Through touch, I assume.” She didn’t know why it came out so low, so hoarse.

Eammon’s shoulders went rigid, his own answer graveled. “Yes.”

The old scars on his hands were white, a match for the sentinel’s bark beneath them. Instinctually, Red reached out, covered his hand with her own.

“The tree, Red,” Eammon murmured.

She lifted her hand, cheeks flushed. After a moment’s hesitation, she gently touched the sentinel.

It was like a current, as soon as her hand met the trunk, running through every limb and drawing up her spine. The power in her middle unfurled, blooming outward to press against her palm, a compass needle with the sentinel as north star. For a moment, her skin felt like an unwelcome barrier, holding back the union of something long torn apart. Red hissed between her teeth.

“What?” Eammon’s voice crackled with anxiety, his frame all coiled tension.

“It feels different than I thought it would.” She gave him a tiny smile. “What now?”

It seemed he might call the whole thing off, in the space between her question and his answer. Eammon’s jaw worked, gaze flickering from her hand to her face. Red firmed her lips.

Finally, he sighed. “If sentinels are bricks in the wall, we’re the mortar.” Eammon’s eyes shifted from her to the white tree. “Our magic is a piece of the Wilderwood. So is a sentinel. To heal it, we pour our power into it, channel it back to the source. The Wilderwood strengthens, and strengthens us in turn. Rain feeding a river that evaporates to become the rain again.”

“A cycle.” There was a synchronicity to it. Cycles of Wolves, cycles of Second Daughters, cycles of grief.

“Exactly,” Eammon said softly. “You just let the magic move through you. Let it go.”

The sentinel buzzed under her hand. Something gathered behind the bark, an energy drawn to her, pushing forward. Apprehension danced with anticipation in her middle.

It must’ve shown on her face. Eammon shook his head. “You don’t—”

“No, I can do it.” Red concentrated on the rush in her veins, the warmth of the bark under her palm. She made her breath slow, counted her metronome heartbeats until they were an even rhythm. Eammon next to her, Eammon needing help, smoothed the chaotic ocean of her power to placid water as she closed her eyes.

Deep green spilled through her mind, changing the shade of the darkness behind her eyelids. It painted her thoughts in shades of sea-foam and emerald, lit in the very center by a soft, golden glow.

The more she concentrated, the clearer it grew. The glow was the sapling, a shining shape in a sea of shining shapes. A golden network of tall, straight trees with deep roots, bright lights casting enough shadow to hold a world.

Some sentinels were dimmer than others— those weakened were candle-flames, while the sentinels holding strong flared bonfire-bright. Their roots were a knotted riot, jagged lines of gold. But all of them led to a familiar shape, their vast network collecting in a frame she knew.

Eammon. As part of the Wilderwood as any sentinel, roots winding through him like he was their soil. Man tangled inextricably with forest, equal parts branch and bone. Half subsumed in the Wilderwood, but not drained, not like his mother or father or the other Second Daughters. Holding it all with a strength she couldn’t quite fathom, a determination that awed and frightened her at once.

He wasn’t human. She’d known that, seen it proven over and over. He was something different, as mysterious as the forest he inhabited. The forest that inhabited him.

This was the first time the reminder made her chest ache.

“Red?” He sounded so tentative.

She pressed her fingers into the trunk like he might be able to feel it, a reassuring pressure. “I’m fine.” A pause stretched long as her mind’s eye surveyed him, the seed from which all the Wilderwood bloomed. “It’s beautiful.”

Silence. The forest seemed to hold its breath.

“Follow my lead,” Eammon said finally. Then his golden form in her thoughts flashed bright. Liquid light seeped out of him, along the shining network he was tied to, going instead to the sentinel.

Gently, like a flower opening to the sun, Red let her power grow. It flowed up through her center and spilled out her palms, calmed and given purpose by Eammon’s closeness. The light she let go wasn’t as bright as Eammon’s, but it was no less welcome.

The sentinel before them slowly brightened, its flickering candle-flame gaining strength as their light drowned out the shadow.

Red stood with her hands pressed against the white tree and let the magic cycle, the rain feeding the river. As the dim figure of the sentinel brightened in her mind’s eye, she felt golden power flowing into her, too— at first, it made her start, spiked fear along her shoulder blades. But the Wilderwood, for now, wasn’t interested in conquest. She was just a part of the cycle, a rung on the wheel. The bright, thin filament of magic it’d left in her glowed, winding languidly around her bones.

It felt . . . good. Good, and this was the first time she really believed it, despite the insistence from Eammon and Fife that the sentinels weren’t malicious for all their want of her. It felt too simple a concept for such a complicated thing, but they were in accord, she and the Wilderwood, at least on the most basic level. They wanted the same things. It was bent on its own survival, its own need.

She thought of running through the forest on her birthday, the fierce desire deep in her gut to live. That’s what she felt from the sentinel, from the Wilderwood it was attached to. A deep, reckless determination to live.

When the sentinel was gone and her palm touched Eammon’s instead of bark, she had no idea how much time had passed.

Her eyes opened, banishing the shining network of the Wilderwood to see the man instead. He watched her with his brows slashed low, full mouth slightly parted, black hair falling over his forehead. The whites of his eyes were traced faintly in emerald, his shadow longer on the ground than it had been before, the edges feathered like leaves. He’d rolled up his long sleeves, and bark sheathed his forearms again.

Eammon didn’t try to hide the changes magic wrought in him. He stood there, still, and let her see.

Her wrists pressed close to his, the network of her veins outlined in green. The urge to cover them was instinctual, but Red kept her hands steady. If he wasn’t hiding, she wasn’t, either. What they’d just done— healed the Wilderwood, if only a small part of it, together and unbloodied— wrought honesty from them both.

Slowly, the green in his eyes faded. Bark disappeared, revealing only scarred skin; his height lessened, the edges of his shadow on the ground grew more solid. No permanent changes, not this time, though that previous extra height lingered. Just another scar, another mark made for the forest.

He watched her a moment longer, the severe lines of his face unreadable as the veins winding up her arms faded back to blue. Then Eammon dropped his hand from hers and turned away.

Red pressed her palm against her thigh, banishing the lingering warmth of his touch. At their feet, where the sentinel had been, there was only unbroken moss. “Looks like it worked.”

Eammon made a low sound of affirmation. Red followed his gaze— right beyond the gate, within the line of the other trees, the sapling grew.

Only it wasn’t a sapling now. It was full-grown, thick-trunked. Leaves bloomed from the white branches clustered around its crown, vibrant and green.

“Looks like it did.” There was something like wonder in his face, and it transformed the harsh lines of it, backlit by forest and mist.

Hidden beneath Red’s sleeve, the Bargainer’s Mark twinged. She pressed her hand against it, fleetingly, and forced her gaze back to the sentinel, away from him.

Already the green leaves had dulled, muted. One let loose from a branch, drifted to the forest floor.

Eammon hissed in a breath. She’d seen the forest woven into him, rooted between his bones— its failing hurt him.

“You aren’t bleeding for it anymore,” she said, the words fiercer for their softness. “This damn forest gets no more pieces of you while I’m here.”

His eyes held a denying light, but when he looked at her, something tenuous and unreadable replaced it.

Her palm still buzzed where it’d pressed against the trunk, and Red shook it, trying to dispel the itch. “Are there any others? We can—”

“We aren’t doing anything until you put some shoes on.” Eammon gave her bare feet a pointed look.

She curled her toes into the moss. “The Wilderwood ate my boots, remember?” Barefoot had served her fine thus far— if she was only running through the courtyard to get to the tower or staying in the Keep, it wasn’t so bad, and she’d stolen Eammon’s socks when she needed them. “None of the Second Daughters left a spare.”

His arm moved, and for a moment, Red thought he might pick her up to keep her feet from the cold ground.

But the moment passed, and Eammon turned toward the tower. “I dug through the storerooms and found an old pair you can have. I left them by the fireplace.” He glanced over his shoulder, brow quirked, then faced the tower again. “They won’t fit, but that didn’t stop you with my shirt.”

“It was too cold to be naked.”

He didn’t turn, but his hand spasmed by his side, and he made a choked noise. Behind him, Red grinned.

There was a slight tremor in Eammon’s shoulders when he pushed the tower door open, though his stride up the stairs remained steady. He’d never been able to completely hide his exhaustion from her, and after seeing just how deeply the Wilderwood tangled in his frame, Red had a new understanding.

Even now, he tried to hide it. Like it was something shameful, something he was determined to bear on his own. It made Red want to slam magic into every tree in this Kings-shitting forest, to strengthen and punish them in equal measure.

“I have something to show you up here, anyway.” Firelight glimmered over the silver constellations on the ceiling as he glanced at her over his shoulder. “Well. Two somethings.”

He crossed to the lone table, nervously pushing back his hair. “They’re not quite as good as new,” he hedged. “But they’re at least readable again.”

Slowly, Red walked to his side. Books scattered the table, next to a familiar leather bag.

Her books.

She gave a little breathless laugh, reaching out to run her finger along their dusty edges. Lines of dirt crawled over the covers, green smudges where growing things had obscured the ink. “I thought I lost them when the corridor collapsed.”

“Nearly. I had a shadows-damned time pulling them out of the moss.”

Her vision blurred. “Thank you.” The book of poems from her mother sat at the top of the pile. Burial had rubbed all the gilt off the cover. Red picked it up, cradled it to her chest. “Thank you, Eammon.”

“You’re welcome.” He shifted, like he wasn’t quite sure how to hold himself. His hand flexed by his side.

After a moment, Eammon stepped away, pointing to the fireplace. “Boots are there,” he said unnecessarily. “Then, one more thing.”

Red shoved her feet in the boots— far too big, but warm— and clomped over to join Eammon at one of the vine-carved windows. Something leaned against the wall next to it, swathed in gray fabric.

“This might not work.” The look he gave her was stern, all the nervousness of before carefully tucked away. “But I didn’t feel right keeping it from you.”

“Ominous.”

Eammon tugged off the cloth. Beneath, a mirror, or something shaped like one. The glass wasn’t reflective— instead, a matte gray. The color within it shifted, like looking into a smoke-filled jar.

“What is it?”

“My mother made it with Wilderwood magic.” Eammon glanced at her, eyes unreadable. “To see her sister, Tiernan.”

Understanding was an undertow. Red’s hands fell numb at her sides. She turned from Eammon to the mirror, wariness washed away by longing. She’d grown adept at pushing away thoughts of Neve, these past weeks in the forest, but just the mention of the word sister made her heart feel suddenly too big for her rib cage. “Oh.”

“It’s old,” Eammon cautioned. “No one has tried to use it for centuries, and with the way the Wilderwood is now, it could be completely useless. But I . . .” He trailed off, took a breath. “You said, if you could do anything, you’d tell your sister you were safe. This won’t let you speak with her, but hopefully, it will at least let you see her.”

Gratitude seemed too small a term for the sudden lightness in her chest, like a weight she hadn’t noticed she was carrying suddenly lifted. “Eammon . . .” She stopped, swallowed. “Eammon, this is . . .”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry this is all I have to give you.”

“It’s enough.” Her answer came immediately, instinctually. In the firelight, his eyes looked like honey.

Red stepped forward, reaching for the mirror but not quite touching it. “How does it work?”

“Sacrifice.” Eammon snorted. “Of course.”

“Blood?”

“No.” Quick, sharp. “I mean, it would work, but perhaps let’s give the bleeding a rest.”

Her rough braid fell over her shoulder; Red plucked out a split-ended strand and held it up. “This, then?”

Eammon nodded, arms crossed and jaw tense. “I’ll be right here,” he said, stern once again. “If something feels strange, in any way, I’m pulling you out.”

Red made an absent noise of agreement, all her attention on the matte surface of the mirror. Carefully, she wound the long strand of her hair through the swirls of the frame. Then she stepped back, stared into its darkness, and waited.

Five heartbeats, six. Nothing. Disappointment tasted bitter in the back of Red’s throat, and she was about to turn away, when something glimmered in the depths of the mirror.

The light of it caught her, reeled her in, a speck of silver in the gray. The longer she stared, the larger and more brilliant it grew, smoke billowing across its shine, growing and growing until it filled her vision entirely.

A blast of soundless light, like an exploding star, smoke whirling into dark cosmos.

And when the smoke cleared, there was Neve.